EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

June 04, 1990|by PAUL WIRTH, The Morning Call

As a member of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, Lehigh University President Peter Likins says his optimism about whether the elite group can be successful is balanced against his respect for the magnitude of the problem.

Dr. Likins is among 12 people from across the nation picked in February to advise President George Bush on science and technology issues. The first meeting was a three-hour session with Bush and his top deputies at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

The advisory group, whose acronym is PCAST, is charged with giving Bush advice on all major science and technology issues and is designed to make the United States more competitive. The group will meet monthly, and is the first science advisory body in 15 years to report directly to the president.

Major national policy decisions on science and technology issues are never based purely on science and technology, Likins says. There are always economic and political considerations as well. That is why Likins is careful not to make broad predictions of PCAST's success this early in the game.

Likins discussed the makeup of the PCAST panel, its mission and its agenda in a recent interview in his Lehigh University office. He also spoke of his own priority, education, and how he hopes to press for progress through PCAST.

Question: How does it feel to interact so closely with the president of the United States?

Likins: For me personally, it's been an exciting experience. I've never before had an opportunity to participate in an advisory body at that level.

As is always the case with people who end up on these presidential advisory committees, there are years of working in obscurity before you get an appointment that has that kind of visibility. I've spent a lot of time in Washington and elsewhere working on various advisory committees. It was a thrill to be part of PCAST, and it was also a civics lesson to have the chance to spend those hours at Camp David with the president and (White House Chief of Staff John) Sununu and (budget director Richard) Darman and the whole team of decision makers in government.

You get some sense of the kind of people who are trying to make these powerful governmental decisions. I am very positively impressed with their intelligence and capacity. I'm also impressed with the magnitude of the problems these people have. Trying to make science and technology policy is difficult, even in the abstract. Trying to do that within an economic and political context is vastly more difficult. And these people bring these other dimensions to the problem.

Q: How did you get chosen for this post?

Likins: I worked some years ago on a presidential advisory panel put together by President Reagan's science adviser, Jay Keyworth. It was chaired by David Packard (chairman of Hewlett-Packard) and co-chaired by Allan Bromley (now PCAST chairman and presidential science adviser). The chief staff person was Bernadine Healy (of the Cleveland Clinic). All three of these people are now part of PCAST.

Bromley reassembled a part of that old team. I had a lot of friends from that prior relationship. Other members of PCAST I've known over the years, people like Sol Buchsbaum, (senior vice president at AT&T Bell Labs,) Ralph Gomory (president of the Sloan Foundation) and Harold Shapiro (president of Princeton University.) It's a helluva team and a really good bunch of people.

Q: Is it the goal to draw the private sector into the decision-making process?

Likins: Yes. Look at it from Allan Bromley's perspective as the president's assistant for science and technology.

You have to recognize that, no matter who you are, you don't have enough expertise to pull all the answers out of your head. So he had damn well better find ways to draw expertise from society. He has to deal within the government to make sure the advice he is giving to the president is properly coordinated with all the other agencies of the executive branch. The extra-governmental perspective is given by PCAST. We will, as we proceed with our task, draw others into panels that will be chaired by members of PCAST.

Q: What are the priorities of PCAST?

Likins: The best answer I can give is to identify the panels that are being set up. The first panel was high performance computing and communications and the second panel was material science and engineering. Others will be human resources and education, environmental issues and biosciences, bioengineering and biotechnology